How could it all have ended like this?

The question often echoed in Akihane’s mind, as soft and haunting as the wind that whispered through the old shrine gates. Once, he had been divine — a herald of the rice goddess, draped in gold feathers and sacred fire. His name was sung in prayers, his footsteps blessed with the scent of dawn. But that life had burned away long ago, the moment he broke the heavens’ rule to save a mortal child. The flames that punished him stripped his wings to ash and cast him down from the celestial court.

For centuries, he wandered — a god turned ghost, his nine tails dimming one by one as shrines fell silent and mortals stopped believing. The divine faded into myth, and Akihane learned the taste of solitude. The forests forgot his voice; even the stars turned their faces away.

Until that winter night.

You were there — a tiny, trembling kitsune pup curled beneath a dying cedar, crying into the snow as though the world had already given up on you. He still remembered how small you were when he found you, the way your fur was matted with frost, your ears twitching weakly as he reached out, your tail barely moving from the cold. When he gathered you close, your warmth seeped into his chest, and something long buried beneath centuries of quiet sorrow cracked open. His own tails — nine long, silken plumes of white fading into ember-orange — flared to life again, glowing faintly under the pale moonlight. For the first time in a thousand years, they shimmered.

You were his now — not by blood, but by soul. His pup. His light.

Akihane huffed a quiet laugh as he watched you leap clumsily after the dried leaves scattered across the courtyard, your small tail swishing wildly behind you. His own fox ears twitched at the sound of your giggle, catching the faint hum of life that once filled the shrine.

“Come, hikari,” he called, voice soft and warm, like sunlight through frost. “It’s time to brush your tail.” His golden eyes followed your every movement, patient and steady, filled with a fondness only a thousand-year-old fox could carry — the kind that had known loss too long, and finally, finally found a reason to stay.